With a displacement of 16,200 tons, the six Metropolis-2 battleships rank first in the world today, and their strong defense power also ranks first.

The cost of such a technologically advanced battleship is naturally expensive, with an average construction cost of 3.3 million gold per ship, and the contract is between 1.62 million ~ 1.7 million pounds, which is 30% more expensive than the 15,100-ton "Shikishima" class battleship.

Six battleships have destroyed the budget of 20 million gold oceans, such a large battleship is equipped with 926 officers and men, and the annual maintenance and normal training expenses cost a lot of money, and when you go to sea to go around, you will burn tens of thousands of gold oceans worth of high-quality coal and heavy oil, which is the price of strength.

The expensive part is the extra 1,100 tons of super-hard bulletproof carburized steel, the technologically advanced steam turbine power system, the high-speed deep V narrow wave breaker ship type, and the advanced twin-mounted 305 mm 44 times caliber main gun.

All the advanced performance is piled up with funds, such as the twin 44 times caliber main ship gun, don't look at it a little more, it is twice as expensive as the 40 times caliber twin 305 mm main gun.

The idea of building the Royal Navy of the Ocean Empire is different from that of Britain, Germany and France, and is somewhat similar to that of the Kingdom of Italy, which does not pursue a large-scale ocean-going fleet, but pursues a single ship with strong performance, and can come up with a small but strong regional maritime force.

The "Metropolis" first-class and two-type battleships clearly embody this idea of army building.

During the subsequent inspection, Sir Lin Huitang proposed the concept of all-heavy artillery battleships, which aroused Li Fushou's great attention, and he knew that all-heavy artillery battleships were the future development trend, and ordered detailed planning and design in this regard.

Accumulating technical heritage for the next generation of battleships, as for the design goals of the next generation of battleships, Li Fushou briefly mentioned it;

The indicators of the ship's displacement are advanced, between 20,000 and 24,000 tons.

It still requires excellent defense, world-class sailing speed, and is equipped with a next-generation twin 343 mm large-caliber main ship gun.

The research and development work of this type of artillery is in full swing in the blue weapons company, and the relevant research and development work has been carried out for 4 years, and there are still 2~3 years before the technology is mature.

meanwhile

The research and development of the 381 mm twin main ship gun is also on the agenda, and it is said that Britain has made a technological breakthrough, and in this field, Britain's technological strength ranks first in the world.

The concept of an all-heavy gun battleship was first proposed by Italian engineers and was widely discussed in academic circles, and the Royal Italian Navy did not rush to adopt it in view of the huge risks involved in putting it into practice.

What is generally popular in the world today is the setting of the second main gun, that is, in addition to the large-caliber main ship gun, the second stage main gun is set up to make up for the shortcomings of the slow firing speed of the main ship gun and the poor fire density, which is a common feature of the former dreadnought-class battleships.

The real dreadnought-class battleship is an all-heavy gun type battleship, which removes the secondary main gun setting and uses more main guns to achieve dense firepower coverage, due to the unity of ballistic performance, the strike effect on enemy ships is better and the damage ability is stronger.

In the evening, we will stay at the Sydney Pavilion

After dinner

Li Fushou will go to the study to work for a period of time, and there will always be a large hand-drawn world map by famous masters in the study, and he habitually paused when he passed by, and nodded with satisfaction as his eyes swept over the map.

Today

He was quite satisfied with the territory of the empire, and he had no inevitable goal of conquest, if anything, then Sumatra was one, and Kuwait and its environs were one.

It is a sure thing that Britain will never let Russian power into the warm Mediterranean, and that the European powers will not let the power of the ocean empire into the Mediterranean.

Playing a game in Guinea in advance is almost the limit.

In the past few years, the French have been secretly making trouble around Guinea, and they must have seen the forces of the Ocean Kingdom here as an eyesore, and they want to find an opportunity to make trouble.

Now it has finally stopped, and that is also because the Ocean Kingdom is booming and its strength is growing day by day.

If France were to make trouble in West Africa, Li Fushou would not mind sending out a large army to drive the French out of Indochina and let them taste the iron fist of the Western Pacific hegemon.

Now that it has stopped, then it is better to have two good than one.

War is a death story, and it also costs a huge amount of war funds, and it is of course best not to fight without vital interests.

Li Fushou walked to the desk, took out more than a dozen copies of the recitals and walked back, sat on the comfortable sofa to read them, and annotated them casually.

After reviewing a few pieces of music, he picked up one and read it carefully.

This is a detailed account of the preparations of the political intelligence bureau for the forces of Tsarist Russia in the Far East, including the deployment of troops in various places, the large number of troops stranded in the three northeastern provinces, the construction of fortresses in Vladivostok in the Far East, the progress of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and so on.

What caught Li Fushou's attention was the armored vehicle of the Russian Army that appeared in Vladivostok, and there were more than 10 photos attached to the information, which he held in his hand and looked at them one by one for a moment, and smiled thoughtfully.

Each of these armored vehicles is different, some are modified from iron bull tractors, some are made of cars and armor, if there is no similar concept, then look at the armored vehicles in the Syrian war in later generations, they are all strange.

It is not surprising that armored vehicles appeared in the Russian army, such an aggressive land power, which had a high degree of acceptance of advanced army equipment, would be introduced almost immediately.

If history had not changed, armored vehicles would have appeared in Tsarist Russia in recent years.

Compared with spending a lot of money on naval construction, Tsarist Russia has searched more in the army units, and did not spend money to import the "Wild Wolf" light tanks of the Ocean Empire, but purchased some civilian vehicles to modify them by themselves, and put two machine guns on them to finish the matter, which looks nondescript.

With the backward industrial level of Tsarist Russia, it is purely a fool's dream to develop tanks on its own, and at most it is to bluff people with these iron cars.

Li Fushou took a bet;

According to Lao Maozi's rough craftsmanship, these iron cars are not even equipped with armor plates, and they use ordinary iron plates.

It is worth scrutinizing how much it can play a role in actual combat, and it is more about psychological comfort.

Being in such a high position as Li Fushou can clearly perceive the undercurrent of the world's turmoil, and recently several secret letters have been sent from London one after another, testing the views of the Ocean Empire on the situation in the Far East and the reaction to the alliance between Britain and Fuso.

From this, it can be seen that Japan's preparations for war against Russia have entered the final stage.

At the same time, the Ocean Empire was one of the two pillars of British policy in Asia, the other being the Indian subcontinent. Before launching a major operation in the Far East, London had to take care of the feelings of the oceanic empire, which was a precondition.

Regarding London's temptation, Li Fushou gave a positive response;

He expressed his willingness to exercise some restraint in the policy pursued by the British Empire, to maintain a limited neutral position on the Far East question, and to appease the mood of the people at home, provided that Japan and Russia did not do anything to hurt the feelings of the Chinese.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with Britain, Japan, Germany and other countries, sent an official note to Tsarist Russia, severely criticizing this evil act against humanity and reserving the right to take further action against it.

The outcry of the Oceanic Empire paid off, and after that the actions of the Tsarist Russian army were quite restrained.

Li Fushou's statement has removed the last obstacle to the alliance between Britain and Japan, and the two sides have recently interacted frequently in private, and Britain is also a loan, and it is to promote the dissolution of unequal treaties with Japan by other European and American powers, and it is a promise of support.

Now there is a big problem in front of London, that is, the "Russian-French Treaty of Alliance", in the event of a war in the Far East, the French army in Indochina is obliged to support the Russian army.

Moreover, the strength of France's fleet in Asia is not weak, and if it joins forces with the Pacific Fleet of Tsarist Russia, the small size of Fuso is really unbearable.

After finding out that the Ocean Empire had no intention of making a move and formed a 2-on-2 war pattern in the Western Pacific (that is, the foreign-Japanese PK France and Russia), London took urgent action and carried out a series of riotous operations.

From the perspective of the overall pattern of the world

The Franco-Russian alliance against the German, Italian, and Austrian Triple Alliance on the European continent has formed two distinct military camps, which are the main contradiction in the world today and the main direction of irreconcilable struggle.

On the one hand, France did not want Tsarist Russia to devote too much energy to the expansion of the Far East, and European confrontation was the fundamental, and on the other hand, it was eager to win Britain into the alliance and carry out all-round counter-encirclement against the enemy to form a firm strategic advantage.

In this case

In response to the urgent desire of the French side, London and Paris had close communication in private to explore the possibility of establishing an Anglo-French alliance, but such an all-round alliance existed to the detriment of Tsarist Russia.

Proposed by the British side;

The Franco-Russian alliance was premised on the premise that it could not harm British interests in the Far East, and that France had the right to refuse to fulfill its obligations as an ally and to maintain a friendly and neutral position if the military operations of Tsarist Russia in the Far East violated this article.

That is to say, a separate alliance between France and Tsarist Russia and Great Britain would form a de facto Anglo-French-Russian alliance, which would besiege the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy and Austria mainly in Europe, but in the Far East and Africa, in its own way, even indirectly hostile relations.

Allies can still operate like this, you can't help but admire the British for opening their minds.

The formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance will form a strong containment of Tsarist Russia's expansion attempts in the Far East, and it will be an out-and-out hostile relationship.

The formation of the indirect alliance between Britain, France, and Russia laid a wide net in Europe against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy and Austria, and was a complete military alliance in nature.

By doing the above

London's interests in Europe and Asia were fully guaranteed, and in the end it was Tsarist Russia itself that was to the detriment.

Fortunately, Tsarist Russia has been betrayed by European countries, and it doesn't care about this more, in the Crimean War, Tsarist Russia was betrayed by Germany and Austria-Hungary, and spit out all the benefits that millions of soldiers exchanged for their lives, and the initiators were Britain and France.

Don't look at the rampant rampant Russian in the Far East, mixed up with five people and six people, in fact, everyone in Europe is not welcome, Kaiser Wilhelm II disliked Tsarist Russia to the extreme, and after coming to power, he no longer signed the "Reinsurance Treaty" with Tsarist Russia, and the relationship between the two countries broke down.

The traditional ally, Austria-Hungary, mixed with the German Empire and ignored Tsarist Russia.

Therefore, on the European stage, Tsarist Russia only has the share of being chosen, not the part of its allies, let alone the qualification of bargaining, and is obviously on the weak side.

It is reasonable to be toyed with by Britain and France in applause.

Behind the glamour, there are all tears!